Turning to FIGS. 1 and 2, a diagram of a example of a conventional router 100 can be seen. This router 100 is generally housed within a chassis that includes a wired switching fabric 104 (which is generally comprised of “long reach” serializer/deserializer (SerDes) links) which is controlled by a controller 102. These “long reach” SerDes links can be up to several feet in length, are complex in construction, and consume a large amount of power. Coupled (through slots 106-1 to 106-N) to the this switching fabric 104 (which is part of “backplane” of the router 100) are line card 108-1 to 108-N. These line cards 108-1 to 108-2 (labeled 108 in FIG. 2 for the sake of simplicity) generally include a fabric interface 110 that communicates with the fabric 104 through slots 106-1 to 106-N (labeled 106 in FIG. 2 for the sake of simplicity) and ports 112-1 to 112-R that communicate with the interface 110 over “short reach” SerDes links. The ports 112-1 to 112-R generally include Ethernet connections (i.e., through RJ45 connectors).
This conventional arrangement has numerous drawbacks. Principally, the backplane (which includes the switching fabric 104) is complex, expensive, and consumes a large amount of power. Thus, there is a need to for improved router backplanes.
Some examples of conventional systems are: U.S. Pat. No. 5,754,948; U.S. Pat. No. 6,967,347; U.S. Pat. No. 7,330,702; U.S. Pat. No. 7,373,107; U.S. Pat. No. 7,379,713; U.S. Pat. No. 7,768,457; U.S. Patent Pre-Grant Publ. No. 2009/0009408; and U.S. Patent Pre-Grant Publ. No. 2009/0028177.